TESTIMONY
SMEARS
A snowy morning
unfolding
I smear my eyes
the crimson details
from my life.
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TESTIMONY
When snow falls, there lives
the shrill cries that
leaves are not alone.
Each flake, a mute testimony
not a leaf falls before
surgery prunes the individual tree.
Cold November after
brown and white conspire,
the forest leaves a bleeding crust,
scar tissue from natural wars.
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FORTRESS SNOW
The embankment lies as heavy
edges on our lives.
The shadows of the rock,
piled drifts huge monotony's ledge,
accumulations by the side of the tree
wear thin visages;
the breath of summer eclipsed.
Snow reigns supreme;
teeters about the rim
of the city's existence.
Pettiness of man's realm - pretty
foliage of the transient,
wrappings upon our lives
brittle near the storm.
The reply of the eternal,
fire on stone
blazons reality
the peaked remains
of snow streaked sun.
Immensity governs us;
clarity of the temporal
fire set by the staccato
of man's rhythm.
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CIENFUEGOS
The white pin wheel of heat turns up the grasses' edge.
Some dried plant stalks shrivel,
then melt openly into layers of fire.
It is end - time for the community's Christmas trees.
Something akin to burnt offerings,
reluctant souls or
hedging captives kept alive
ghoulishly for some cannibal's feast;
this festival of crackling.
They have served their purpose, now.
Bound, no faggots need be applied.
Contumely, the quiet desperation darkens
the child's face.
The headlights rain down on Christmas' debris.
A hundred little fires as cigarette warnings
daub the night air.
The forest of smoke, canyon of the torch,
where black marauders poke the nostril.
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DEVASTATION
Little red berries are
the crop of this stump tree.
They are the prize stubble
where little growth is come.
A transplant of hair after
a serious illness
or after fire ravages
the body's wilderness
is that first sip of broth taken.
Little by little, they bring cautious
hope that more will
stumble into other pocket crevices,
the bits of life amidst the spores of stillness.
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BEE AN APPLE
The taste of an apple,
the cringing of a bee
as sun stops turning
a ladle over their skins;
the fire gold stains
on apple's skin,
the honey yellow, black bits
a hornet wrinkles in.
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EMPTINESS
The threadbare uniforms
we let stare at others
we would refuse ourselves.
The bare walls, misunderstanding,
Support nothing,
taut empty sounds.
The inclusion of everything
excludes nothing
except why it was done.
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CLAWS
Unfolding gazes
throw over
the little reality
surly door.
The dumb
clatter
of ripples
shudder the better life.
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MOON DARK WORLD
The trees
are forming hands
to cloak the sky
with pillow whispers,
until the soft equilibrium
behind laughing eyes
departs down the moon dark world.
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THE ELYSIAN FIELDS
The Elysian fields
gained commensurate with ability
quiet and shimmering in the sun;
varied realms
inverted islands
the angry blessed
ones - thrice born with
the option to survive
on into flesh and blood form.
The conveyer belt of souls
carrying the damaged ones
far into the night,
spitting out the lukewarm
with plenty of latitude
to manoeuvre
in between.
Lavender and the dye from purple shells
in piercing shrieks
extracting the enacted will
of Nietzscheans before their time;
fledglings in a world
ill begotten and
barely within a choosing.
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BARBARY WHITE
How death will steal, from life, to claim us all,
Happy to wrap us in barbary white,
By tapping ash tight fingers, the steel laws of fate,
Will deaden our faces, wrapping our feelings from earthly sight.
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